Michael Brown’s mother: ‘This could be your child’

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(CNN) — Michael Brown’s mother says hearing that a grand jury had decided not to indict the officer who killed her son felt like getting shot.

“We heard this and it was just like, like I had been shot. Like you shoot me now — just no respect, no sympathy, nothing,” Lesley McSpadden told CNN’s Sunny Hostin on Wednesday. “This could be your child. This could be anybody’s child.”

A New York Times video captured the moments after McSpadden heard about the decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the white officer who killed her son, Michael Brown, a black teen. She stood with protesters outside the Ferguson police department, sobbing uncontrollably.

McSpadden’s husband, her son’s stepfather, wrapped her in his arms before turning to the crowd, screaming: “Burn this bitch down.”

“He just spoke out of anger. It’s one thing to speak and it’s a different thing to act. He did not act. He just spoke out of anger,” McSpadden said about her husband, Louis Head.

“When you’re that hurt and the system has did you this wrong, you may say some things as well. We’ve all spoke out of anger before,” she told CNN.

Both McSpadden and Brown’s father, Michael Brown Sr., sat down with Hostin. Neither believes Wilson’s version of events, saying their son would never have taunted the officer, nor reached for his weapon.

They remembered their son as humble, silly and soft spoken. He could fix almost anything and loved animals, his siblings and being a grandson.

“He was different, but he still was like any other teenager — wanted to explore different things, do different things, be around different people,” McSpadden said. “He’s young. He’s growing up. He’s finding himself.”

‘He’s a murderer’

Brown’s father didn’t mince words when he spoke about Wilson: “He’s a murderer.”

“He understood his actions. He understood exactly what he was doing. You know, he didn’t have a second thought, a pushback thought, or nothing. He was intending to kill someone. That’s how I look at it,” Brown said. “He was going to kill someone at that point.”

Earlier, he’d said the grand jury’s decision changed his view of America.

“I was upset. I didn’t understand,” Brown said in a conversation with the Rev. Al Sharpton on Tuesday on MSNBC. “It just let me know that where we live is not what we thought, or what I thought. It’s what people have been saying all the time, for a nice little minute: that this was a racist state.”

Sharpton accused Prosecutor Robert McCulloch of trying to disparage Michael Brown Jr. He asked Michael Brown Sr. how he felt about the prosecutor attacking “the character of the victim.”

“They crucified his character,” Brown said.

In a news conference Monday night announcing the grand jury’s decision, McCulloch extended his “deepest sympathies” to the Brown family and referred to the “tragic death.”

He said the grand jury’s decision was based on evidence and facts, some of which contradicted people who said they witnessed Officer Darren Wilson shooting Michael Brown Jr.

McCulloch had long promised a fair and complete presentation. “It just let me know that where we live is not what we thought, or what I thought. It’s what people have been saying all the time, for a nice little minute: that this was a racist state.” – Michael Brown Sr.

“We will be presenting absolutely everything to this grand jury,” he told a radio program in August. “Every statement that a witness made, every witness, every photograph, every piece of physical evidence. Absolutely nothing will be left out.”

Documents released by the prosecutor’s office show that witnesses gave differing accounts.

Should a special prosecutor have been appointed?

Experts disagree over whether McCulloch should have stepped aside and let a special prosecutor handle the case.

His father, a police officer, was killed on the job by an African-American man in 1964, when McCulloch was 12.

HLN legal analyst Joey Jackson said Wednesday that while there can be discussions about the possibility of bias as a result of his father’s death, there is a more fundamental reason he should not have taken the case: the close relationship prosecutors often have with their local police.

“You rely upon the police every day” as a prosecutor, Jackson said on CNN’s “New Day.”

“You give them your support, your resources. They give those resources back to you.”

CNN legal analyst Paul Callan disagreed with the reasoning. A prosecutor should not be disqualified “because he’s worked with the cops closely in the past. I would say, ‘You know something? He’s a guy with integrity, I’ll trust his investigation.'”

“I think the grand jury reached the right result on the facts of this case,” Callan said. Still, “you have to have public confidence in the result.” If the public did not have faith in McCulloch because of his father’s killing, then “maybe because of the level of public distrust, we should have had a special prosecutor,” Callan said.

1 Comment

Charlotte lewis

I object strenuously to the disgraceful assertion that by stating the truth about Michael Brown, his parents cry defammation oc character. These people can not accept their son was not the man they claim he was so they take it upon themselves to incite the destruction of many peoples’livelihoods. They are allowed with impunity to slander an Officer of the law who escaped a viscious attack by a huge man who had just minutes earlier robbed s store and assaulted a small gentleman as if he had every right to do whatever he wanted to whomevef he wsnted. I sm disgusted that these people are being encouraged by the media to defame whomever they want to blame for their son ‘s crimjnal acts. They should look to themselvex for where they went wrong in raising a son who had no respect for others’ lives of property as evidenced by his scts.